As social scientists continue to debate their colleagues' participation in the military's Human Terrain System, a new voice has entered the fray. George R. Lucas Jr., a military ethicist who is a professor of philosophy at the United States Naval Academy, has just published Anthropologists in Arms: The Ethics of Military Anthropology (AltaMira Press).
Mr. Lucas—as you might imagine of someone who teaches at a military college—is somewhat more sympathetic to the human-terrain program than are the leaders of the American Anthropological Association. (He will speak on a panel at the association's annual meeting on Friday.)
Participating in the human-terrain program might be ethical, Mr. Lucas argues, even if one believes that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are illegitimate. The major fears that social scientists have expressed about the program—namely, that scholars' insights would be used to help the military choose targets—are serious concerns in principle, Mr. Lucas says, but there is little evidence that such things have actually happened.
It might be best, Mr. Lucas argues, for anthropologists to create a nongovernmental organization—"Anthropologists Without Borders," in Mr. Lucas's suggestion—that would advise the military but would not actually be employed by the military.
Mr. Lucas spoke with The Chronicle earlier this week.
Q. The social scientists who have enlisted in the human-terrain program are a diverse bunch—there have been anthropologists, political scientists, psychologists, and regional experts. But the anthropology association has spent by far the most energy debating the program. Do you think it's feasible for there to be a cross-disciplinary conversation about the ethics of the program?
A. Yes, there are people from all over the social sciences who are involved in the program. And so a conversation that goes on within the anthropology association is not necessarily going to have any meaning or jurisdiction for political scientists. But I'd say to the anthropologists that they should engage in conversations with colleagues in other fields, and not simply treat this as a matter for anthropology.
There's an odd pattern here. Some of the events that anthropologists often describe as major black marks in the history of anthropology—like Project Camelot [a military-financed effort to study social stability in the developing world], in the 1960s—when you look at those programs carefully, there actually weren't many anthropologists involved. They were other social scientists. But it's anthropologists who tend to dwell on those events. And I don't know what to make of that pattern. I certainly think there needs to be a wider discourse.
Q. Has the human-terrain program ever reached out to you or any other military ethicist for advice?
A. Not to my knowledge, no. Certainly not to me, and I don't think they have to anyone. But the same can be said of the anthropology committees that have examined the program. Before the anthropology association issued its findings about the program, they didn't seek any guidance from ethicists. And when you compare that with the history of, let's say, medicine: —iIn the 1950s, when they discovered that they were involved in ethically thorny issues that were outside their domain of expertise, they called in philosophers and theologians.
Q. Why do you believe that participating in the human-terrain program can be morally permissible even if one believes that the current wars are illegitimate?
A. Yes, that's the hard question. It struck me that the situation that the anthropologists are in is similar to the situation of a doctor who disagrees with the war but who might be willing to go over to the combat zone and help with casualties, especially noncombatant civilians. That person wouldn't see himself as licensing or approving of the war. But I recognize that that's a very difficult tightrope to walk.
Comments
1. 11245928 - December 04, 2009 at 09:46 am
I have not yet read Dr. Lucas's book, but I intend to. His statement here that he considers it an odd pattern that only anthropologists seem to dwell on Camelot and events like it show that he doesn't quite get the relationship between anthropologists and the people they work with. The bond there is a moral one bertween cultures, communities and between people. If there is a "do no harm" clause in the anthropologist's oath, it is in reference to the people with whom the researcher lives, eats, shares experiences, etc. Anthropologists involved in Camelot, in the controversy surrounding Thailand's Tribal Research Center during the Vietnam War, and other controversies center on that relationship. It is here that the discipline has focusd and it si the reason for the "odd pattern" that Dr. Lucas notes. It is quite possible, however, that anthropologists could ask ethicists to help them in their approach to these issues. It is interesting, however, that it is often the ethics of the people with whom we work that have to be respected, not our own, and it is possioble that there are some interesting disconnects in the principles governing their ethics and our own. The anthropologist is often liminal herself, lost between two cultures and faced with code switching behavior rahter tnan judgments when living in either of the systems that are her own.
2. drtillie - December 04, 2009 at 12:24 pm
Isn't "military ethicist" an oxymorom?
3. jesor - December 04, 2009 at 01:16 pm
I find it a little bit nearsighted to just shout "It's war therefore anything that touches it is unethical". The reality of the situation is that the military will intervene in a particular community, culture, or people regardless of what the anthropologists think about whether or not it's right. The moral justification for participating as a social scientist is that if your data provides a viable alternative to violence being used, and can minimize a harm that is being done anyways, then participation is not only ethical, but possibly a moral imperative. Unfortunately, war seems to be a recurring disaster similar to a hurricane, earthquake, or tsunami. Would an anthropologist argue against a levee because it might disrupt the cultural relationship between a people and the water?
4. navydad - December 04, 2009 at 05:15 pm
"Isn't "military ethicist" an oxymorom (sic)?"
I certainly hope not. Our military folks command extremely dangerous forces. If any segment of our society requires clear and firm ethical standards, it's the military. Unless of course drtillie is suggesting that we shouldn't have a military at all or that our military people shouldn't concern themselves with ethics, both of which are ludicrous suggestions.
Anyway, I'd guess the comment was a clever quip and pointing out its absurdity is taking it way too seriously. Or are you in fact serious about this, drtillie?
5. spirit_of_justice - December 04, 2009 at 05:18 pm
Ironically, in the post-911 environment, critical thinking is suppressed or willingly, publicly suspended, suppressed, self-censored, or spirally silenced in the American public square. It is probably even more so in a military environment where Dr. Lucas works.
It is good to hear that War College has positions for military ethicists. At least, I hope, the soldiers and planners of wars will hear from Dr. Lucas and colleagues, about ethics and perhaps learn to question the assumptions of their strategies and tactics of war making;
EVEN THOUGH:
(1) We are living in a fastastic world now--a world of 'shock and awe' in which lies are used to justify wars, and more importantly spiral of silence dominates public discourse. It is world built on a fantastic theory of 911, even though there is deterministic proof that the government's narrative framing of 911 is FASLE (Ref: Catholic Philosopher David Griffin's series of works that include "The New Pearl Harbor Revisited: 9/11, the Cover-Up, and the Exposé" and "The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Why the Final Official Report About 9/11 Is Unscientific and False", Physicist Steven Jones and other scientist's works at , and Architect Richard Cage's analysis at .
(2) We are living in a fantastic world in which democracies produce and support fascist leaders who manipulate lies to lead their nations into unethical wars. Bush and Blair led two great democracies into wars of invasion in a fascist style. But, even after they have left power, even after their lies have been exposed, and even after deterministic evidence against their outrageous conspiracy theory of 911 has been produced (e.g., the scientifically impossible free-fall collapse of the three World Trade Center towers; the scientific discovery of nano thermites in the dusts of Ground Zero; and so on), these democracies have maintained a coordinated discursive closure on the issues, dodging a credible, meaningful, scientific, judicial inquiry that would have identified the real criminals that perpetrated those horrible crimes. Except for a few notable moral heroes like Griffin, Jones, and Cage, most intellectuals in have refrained from even examining the fallacies of their logics of war.
(3) We are living in a constructed world in which the weasel words "conspiracy theorists" are used to label thinkers who question the received account of 911. And most people accept them without even questions, either out of fear, out of apathy, or out sheer historical heritage of hate.